So you want to be an automotan..

[B_M_W]

I think I understand where BMW is coming from, and I tend to agree with him.  I know you don't like nitpickery but perhaps the better word to use is "robotic", adjective, as opposed to "robot", noun.  It may seem nitpickey, but really, there are two different meanings there. 

And meaning is everything when it comes to comunication.

Speling is opshunul.

Sorry. I suck at spelling.

[Jasper]

even that statement can prolly be refined and noted that the REAL opposition of 'interpretation' is motive or motivation

meaning may not depend on interpretation
but
meaning might be the interface or grounds on which motivation behind a message meets the interpretation of the message

the meaning of a message may not have anything to do with the motivation or the interpretation


"000 you are a nice guy"
you can see the 3 components there:
1. why would i say that?
2. how do you interpret it?
3. what is the meaning


this may all seem abstract, but it can be made practical

very practical

i think Netaungrot and maybe some others would agree

This is why net communications are more meaning-oriented than social interactions in person, except that in person you become part of a vast set of exchanges in speech, tone, inflection, pitch, timbre, tempo, grammar, syntax, body language, eye contact, interplay of ego-dynamic, hidden or dual-meanings;

There is SO much noise.  In text,

Content Can Communicate Completely Cohesively

[LHX]

uhhh... Felix...


ummm...

your font is showing

[Jasper]

Is this wrong?

[LHX]

im just saying - you might wanna tuck it in

[Jasper]

Not really my style.

[Triple Zero]

even that statement can prolly be refined and noted that the REAL opposition of 'interpretation' is motive or motivation

meaning may not depend on interpretation
but
meaning might be the interface or grounds on which motivation behind a message meets the interpretation of the message

the meaning of a message may not have anything to do with the motivation or the interpretation


"000 you are a nice guy"
you can see the 3 components there:
1. why would i say that?
2. how do you interpret it?
3. what is the meaning


this may all seem abstract, but it can be made practical

very practical

i think Netaungrot and maybe some others would agree

what you say is spot on, except for that i would like to place "meaning" in the middle of things.

meaning = pattern = form

"meaning" is an inherent/emergent property of "pattern", so much in fact that i would almost go as far as to say they're equivalent.

"interpretation" is something done to a pattern by an outside interpreter/actor, and is therefore (to me) of secondary importance, it comes after the fact, so to speak.
i think we could call "interpretation" the discovery of a pattern, and the situation where multiple interpreters have different interpretations of the same (physical) thing would be the discovery of multiple/different patterns in the same medium.

"motivation" is, i think, something that comes before the pattern. it is the force that urges a certain pattern.
(or, there is another interpretation, where "motivation" implies the inclination of somebody to interpret your messages in a certain way. this would simply translate to the preference of discovering one pattern over another)

ok so i've just been reading some qabalah again recently, and have only read so far as the first three sephiroth, but this stuff really resonates with that. so you'll have to excuse this short sidetrack: (though i'd like to get some SSOOKN approval on it)

meaning = pattern = form, this is obviously Binah (third sephirah).

before that you have motivation, force, the feeling of necessity to express something. this force would be/come from Chokmah (second sephirah), blowing like a fire through Binah which forms this energy into a pattern.

(before that is Kether which happens to be the qabalistic answer to Kenan's question "where did 1 come from?", and before that is the triple veil of negative existence, or triple zero, which happens to be my alias, though i didn't know that at first when i picked it)

(i have the idea that as "interpretation" comes after "form", so that might be the fourth sephirah but i didn't get to Chesed yet with my reading)

[Triple Zero]

btw, i take the above back.

well not entirely back, but i will refute it for myself:

DNA is an example where this whole intrinsic meaning stuff goes haywire. On the one hand, the complete definition of a species (and the nature-part of the individual, even) is encoded in the sequence of A, C T and G's.
On the other hand, without the decoding mechanism, the interpreter, without living cells, without ribosomes, the amino-acids, the mRNA, and the whole everything around it, there is no possibility at all that you are ever going to build a human being if all you have is 3 billion ACTGs.

ok so i stole this line of reasoning from Goedel Escher Bach which i picked up to read again this evening:

let's say you're an alien civilisation, let's say they're made of silicon and breathe methane (to suggest something totally different yet chemically not too implausible). now they receive this CD-ROM with 3 billion basepairs (this would actually fit, actually) and because they're so smart, they figure out a way to read the CD-ROM. now they've got the information, but it's impossible to ever get the meaning out, since they have no way of figuring out from the data itself what an amino-acid looks like (for example). and even then, to recreate the conditions of the womb that allows the proteine binding stuff to kickstart. it's basically a bootstrapping problem.

while on the other hand, if you're a current day human, and you find the DNA of a dinosaur inside a mosquite in a piece of rock, you have at least a theoretical chance of recreating the dinosaur from this DNA, because you've got the decoding mechanisms all around you.

keyword here is context of course.

the answer is a paradox, because there's also evidence of the inherent meaning of a message having a provable effect, independent of context, well sort of.

i'm going to think of it. maybe the DNA thing is like a barstool. as in "in theory meaning can exist independent of context and/or observer, but in practice i'd like to see you TRY"

[Jenne]

In regards to meaning, many dissertations have tried and failed, many a university collaborative paper has tried and failed, many professor has tried and failed to quantify what meaning truly is in all senses.  So, at least in linguistics, we tend to take it discipline by discipline instead.  Meaning encompasses truly too too much in order to define it simply so that all facets are understood.  In fact, there are probably facets that are still unknown, for the history of language only goes as far as the records indicate, and there has been much lost through the ages.

In terms of intent, it is true that the intent of communication, the intent of the utterance, is a major force behind the communication itself.  How it's being interpreted, however, can counterpoint that to the exclusion of the intent's origins, so that the intent is changed in real time, as the construct is uttered, received, and reacted upon.

This mode of communication, posting on an electronic bulletin board, is more static and so this last is not as dynamic as it would be as say in a person-to-person conversation where voice is used, or in a realtime chat room where you can type while the person reads and so on and so forth.

Email and chat forums are slower forms of communication, so they hold more rigidity to the language constructs.  You can be dynamic, but it's less likely as the control over who reads the utterances and who will respond is lessened considerably.  Not knowing who your specific audience is and how they will react is also a factor to consider.

Again...I can go on and on.  I just wanted to point out, I guess, that meaning is not a simple thing to explain, for anyone.  It has depth, history, future, and very real-time implications for communication.  All interlocutors shape it, all discussions factor into it, both known and unknown.

It's relatively unquantifiable...

[LHX]

In regards to meaning, many dissertations have tried and failed, many a university collaborative paper has tried and failed, many professor has tried and failed to quantify what meaning truly is in all senses.  So, at least in linguistics, we tend to take it discipline by discipline instead.  Meaning encompasses truly too too much in order to define it simply so that all facets are understood.  In fact, there are probably facets that are still unknown, for the history of language only goes as far as the records indicate, and there has been much lost through the ages.

In terms of intent, it is true that the intent of communication, the intent of the utterance, is a major force behind the communication itself.  How it's being interpreted, however, can counterpoint that to the exclusion of the intent's origins, so that the intent is changed in real time, as the construct is uttered, received, and reacted upon.

This mode of communication, posting on an electronic bulletin board, is more static and so this last is not as dynamic as it would be as say in a person-to-person conversation where voice is used, or in a realtime chat room where you can type while the person reads and so on and so forth.

Email and chat forums are slower forms of communication, so they hold more rigidity to the language constructs.  You can be dynamic, but it's less likely as the control over who reads the utterances and who will respond is lessened considerably.  Not knowing who your specific audience is and how they will react is also a factor to consider.

Again...I can go on and on.  I just wanted to point out, I guess, that meaning is not a simple thing to explain, for anyone.  It has depth, history, future, and very real-time implications for communication.  All interlocutors shape it, all discussions factor into it, both known and unknown.

It's relatively unquantifiable...

i think you have effectively contradicted yourself and defined that meaning is known, but its a conclusion that 'research teams' dont want to come to

its a conversation ender

existentialists understood that


meaning isnt tough to explain

its etched into communication in a way that renders in undefinable

for a person to say that they 'know the meaning of something' would be the equivalent of talking in the first-person and the third-person at the same time

[LHX]

btw, i take the above back.

well not entirely back, but i will refute it for myself:

DNA is an example where this whole intrinsic meaning stuff goes haywire. On the one hand, the complete definition of a species (and the nature-part of the individual, even) is encoded in the sequence of A, C T and G's.
On the other hand, without the decoding mechanism, the interpreter, without living cells, without ribosomes, the amino-acids, the mRNA, and the whole everything around it, there is no possibility at all that you are ever going to build a human being if all you have is 3 billion ACTGs.

ok so i stole this line of reasoning from Goedel Escher Bach which i picked up to read again this evening:

let's say you're an alien civilisation, let's say they're made of silicon and breathe methane (to suggest something totally different yet chemically not too implausible). now they receive this CD-ROM with 3 billion basepairs (this would actually fit, actually) and because they're so smart, they figure out a way to read the CD-ROM. now they've got the information, but it's impossible to ever get the meaning out, since they have no way of figuring out from the data itself what an amino-acid looks like (for example). and even then, to recreate the conditions of the womb that allows the proteine binding stuff to kickstart. it's basically a bootstrapping problem.

while on the other hand, if you're a current day human, and you find the DNA of a dinosaur inside a mosquite in a piece of rock, you have at least a theoretical chance of recreating the dinosaur from this DNA, because you've got the decoding mechanisms all around you.

keyword here is context of course.

the answer is a paradox, because there's also evidence of the inherent meaning of a message having a provable effect, independent of context, well sort of.

i'm going to think of it. maybe the DNA thing is like a barstool. as in "in theory meaning can exist independent of context and/or observer, but in practice i'd like to see you TRY"

a blueprint or a map is not the same as 'meaning'

in a situation like you are describing, it seems that meaning would have something more to do with the fact that people try to create things and piece together puzzles than it would have something to do with the actual problem they are trying to solve or piece together


like this discussion - the meaning seems to be more along the lines of 'in 2007, people were trying to define what was going on'

there is a 3rd person perspective to this situation that gives it context

[Jenne]

In regards to meaning, many dissertations have tried and failed, many a university collaborative paper has tried and failed, many professor has tried and failed to quantify what meaning truly is in all senses. So, at least in linguistics, we tend to take it discipline by discipline instead. Meaning encompasses truly too too much in order to define it simply so that all facets are understood. In fact, there are probably facets that are still unknown, for the history of language only goes as far as the records indicate, and there has been much lost through the ages.

In terms of intent, it is true that the intent of communication, the intent of the utterance, is a major force behind the communication itself. How it's being interpreted, however, can counterpoint that to the exclusion of the intent's origins, so that the intent is changed in real time, as the construct is uttered, received, and reacted upon.

This mode of communication, posting on an electronic bulletin board, is more static and so this last is not as dynamic as it would be as say in a person-to-person conversation where voice is used, or in a realtime chat room where you can type while the person reads and so on and so forth.

Email and chat forums are slower forms of communication, so they hold more rigidity to the language constructs. You can be dynamic, but it's less likely as the control over who reads the utterances and who will respond is lessened considerably. Not knowing who your specific audience is and how they will react is also a factor to consider.

Again...I can go on and on. I just wanted to point out, I guess, that meaning is not a simple thing to explain, for anyone. It has depth, history, future, and very real-time implications for communication. All interlocutors shape it, all discussions factor into it, both known and unknown.

It's relatively unquantifiable...

i think you have effectively contradicted yourself and defined that meaning is known, but its a conclusion that 'research teams' dont want to come to

its a conversation ender

existentialists understood that


meaning isnt tough to explain

its etched into communication in a way that renders in undefinable

for a person to say that they 'know the meaning of something' would be the equivalent of talking in the first-person and the third-person at the same time

Nope.  Because I'm talking about people concretely acting on known data.  You're reaching into a universe of the virtually unknown and only guessable.  Data =/= what can be or could be...though those conclusions are often reached when you are analyzing them.  Either way, if that's all you have when you're studying a particular construct, then give it up and start over.

I'm not contradicting myself by saying it's virtually unknown for the sheer complication of it.  That just means that those who think they can pin it down succinctly enough are missing most of the picture.

Or just leaving it out.

[LHX]

at first glance, it really doesnt seem like it would be such a demanding undertaking



surprise!

[Jenne]

That's what happens when you look at language with just a "glance."  As the premium form of communication that ties all humanity together...it warrants a bit more.

But I get uppity about it, and I should apologize. 

Meaning, context, intent...these aren't as subjective and vague as someone who first gets into this type of discovery might initially find.  In fact, you can trace most of these back into experience, history and clues that are superimposed ONTO the conversation itself.

However, you can never be inside someone else's head and your own at the same time.  Well, I guess you can claim to, but who's going to believe you?

I find alts to be quite fascinating because of these details, really.  You have to create a new identity with a syntax, vocabulary, tone and meme base, and then carry it through.

[Triple Zero]

> there is a 3rd person perspective to this situation that gives it context

well except in the case of the Goedel-sentence G, which talks about itself*, contains a representation of itself, and it is the inherent meaning of this representation which causes G to be paradoxical.
(and in this case, for a mathematical sentence to be a paradox or not, would be sort of along the same lines as a few billions of base-pairs encoding for either a frog or a human)

now, you could say that the context in this case is the mathematical language, because without that it would just be a (rather long) string of symbols.

except that from the start of the proof, the construction of G, one assertion is that we take an arbitrary mathematical language.

(* stating the mathematical equivalent of "G is false")

Jenne: thanks, got any quick pointers on this from a linguistics point of view?